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Today in college football news, Lay’s Valentina & Lime demolishes Doritos Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch for junk food of the week honors.

Changes: CFB’s especially busy quarter-century

Quick Snaps

Two notes from Andrew Marchand’s insider notes on Pat MacAfee:

• “He has mused with associates about starting his own, independent version of GameDay, according to sources briefed on discussions. …
• “Last fall, McAfee grew upset about being shown swinging and missing during a segment in which he faced a University of Oklahoma softball pitcher. McAfee, according to sources briefed on the incident, demanded to know the name of the GameDay staff member who put it on the air.”

Surprising nobody, GameDay will start the season at Texas-Ohio State. Lee Corso’s final episode, remember. Sure would be cool if McAfee were away doing his own thing elsewhere!

Post-House settlement lightning round:

• “Eight female athletes filed an appeal of the House v. NCAA settlement, arguing that the landmark agreement violates Title IX.” This dispute had long been anticipated.
• “Throughout this case, many involved have pointed to the next big one coming down the pike. Johnson vs. NCAA, which has been moving through the courts for almost six years now, gets into one of the thorniest issues in college sports: employment.”
• “The people in charge are turning quickly to the sport’s next potential rules changes. At the top of the list: moving to a single transfer portal window.”
• As we continue to learn more about what big schools are going to do with their newly allowed $20.5 million allocations, here’s one of several Ohio State details: “Spending $18 million across four sports: football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and women’s volleyball.”

 Deion Sanders sounds okay after some recent health issues.

 Notre Dame is looking into a QB recruit named Brady Quinn, and no, he is not a time traveler. That we know of.

Men’s College World Series starts tonight. Eight things to know, including Arkansas as the melting pot of college baseball transfers. New Mexico Junior College! Florida SouthWestern State, with a capital W!

2025 Countdown: That’s not a Michigan helmet

Until Saturday’s completely format-free 2025 season preview countdown continues today with Conference USA and the MAC, the conferences that usually have the nation’s most and least transient membership rosters, respectively. I decided to pair these two into one edition for a couple reasons:

1. They contain all three of this season’s conference realignment changes in FBS. What a tidy way to catch up!
2. Almost all of the most enjoyable EA Sports rebuilding projects are usually in these two leagues. Who hasn’t labored to build a little MAC guy into Ohio State’s bully? Last year, my Conference USA alma mater, Kennesaw State, was the FBS newbie and thus one of the game’s most frequently undertaken construction projects. This year, CUSA — forever filling a critical role as the onboarding meeting, spaceship airlock and actual transfer portal — provides two such options.

With all this in mind, let’s bring on The Athletic’s Chris Vannini, who has covered lots of college football things, including smaller schools and The Video Game. How convenient!

Which of the two latest CUSA additions (Delaware and Missouri State) would be more fun as a fixer-upper?

Chris: While both have been top-25 FCS programs, I’m interested in Delaware. While playing an early version of the game, I actually spent a little time with them and really enjoyed their playbook, so that’s a bonus. For those unaware, Joe Flacco’s alma mater looks like Michigan, with blue and yellow winged helmets. The Blue Hens are also the only FBS program in the state of Delaware, so they’re unique. They have a balanced offense that may again rotate quarterbacks who can run and pass. The new Dynasty mode will encourage more local recruiting by making distant recruiting visits cost more, so get ready to recruit a lot of New Jersey.

Same question for the MAC. Seems like UMass rejoining after a decade away makes the Minutemen an enticing project?

UMass is another in a long list of former FCS national champions who have moved up to FBS, but they’ve had no success. People around the program earnestly believe it’ll be different now that they’ve started to fund the program the way it should be, and they’ll be near the top of the MAC financially this time around. On the field, UMass brings in dual-threat Yale quarterback Grant Jordan, who might be able to make some waves in the MAC. But it’s also a hard team to predict, with so much portal turnover during a coaching change.

Look at that, sneaking in actual season preview content. As far as Who’s Gonna Win goes, Liberty will surely again be CUSA’s clear favorite* despite losing 2023 league MVP quarterback Kaidon Salter to Colorado. Potential replacement Ethan Vasko played the last two years at Coastal Carolina, which happens to be the school his new head coach, Jamey Chadwell, had just left.

* Last year, Jacksonville State was picked third in the league in the conference’s preseason poll, then beat Western Kentucky in the league title game. Both now enter the season in a big pile of second-tier contenders. Weird way of putting it, I guess. They’re all 0-0.

In the MAC, expect Toledo to be the pick for what feels like the billionth time, though the Rockets have just two league titles since 2004. That sounds way more rude than I’d meant. They’ve been super consistent! So many near-misses! Feel like I’ve typed this exact paragraph annually for a decade now. Sorry.

Also expect some first-place MAC preseason votes for defending champ Ohio, defending runner-up Miami (Ohio) and NIU — the country’s second-best team last year, based on scoring margin in games against Notre Dame. A sleeper pick based on roster stability, though that’s a very relative concept in the MAC: Buffalo.

Your turn. This week’s survey: Whether you’re a gamer or not, which team in all of college football would be the most fun to turn into a CFP contender? I’ll run some of your brilliant ideas next week.

Have a good weekend, and untilsaturday@theathletic.com is how you can email me about any of this. Most of you usually just email me about the non-sequitur intros. Thank you either way.

• Record: 39-21 overall, 11-11 Big Ten Conference (8th place)

• Big Ten Tournament: Champion

• NCAA Tournament: NCAA Regional

The University of Michigan softball team boasted another championship season in 2025, registering a 39-21 record while claiming its second straight — and 12th overall — Big Ten Tournament title. Under the direction of third-year head coach Bonnie Tholl, who earned her 100th career win at the helm of the Michigan program in April, Michigan flipped two regular-season sweeps with top-10 wins over Oregon and UCLA en route to the tournament crown. The Wolverines advanced to the Austin Regional, where they fell to eventual national champion Texas.

Team Highlights

• Michigan captured its second straight Big Ten Tournament title with a 4-0 record and as the No. 8 seed — tied for the lowest seed to win in conference history. The Wolverines shut out a pair of top-10 opponents with a 5-0 win against No. 4-ranked Oregon in the quarterfinals and a 2-0 win over No. 9 UCLA in the championship game.

Michigan broke up a pitchers’ duel in the sixth inning of the championship game when sophomore outfielders Jenissa Conway and Ella Stephenson posted back-to-back RBI hits. Senior right-handed pitcher Lauren Derkowski allowed just three hits and two walks over five innings; sophomore RHP Erin Hoehn entered with one on and no outs and in the sixth and retired all six Bruins she faced. The Wolverines rank first in Big Ten history in tournament titles (12), championship game appearances (18), overall wins (53) and win percentage (.736).

• Of its 11 losses in Big Ten play, Michigan sacrificed leads in eight and was ahead or tied after the fifth inning of seven of them, including two each against No. 3 Oregon, No. 24 Ohio State and No. 7 UCLA. The Wolverines avenged two of those regular-season sweeps in tournament action.

• Michigan batted .309 as a team in 2024 — its highest combined batting average since 2019 (.315) and belted its most home runs (67) since registering 86 in 2016. Five of eight returning starters tallied career-high offensive numbers.

• In perhaps its most exciting home game of the 2025 season, Michigan won a 9-8 slugfest in extra innings to claim the series rubber game against in-state rival Michigan State on March 29. The win was part of a doubleheader sweep and featured five home runs, with three from MSU first baseman Kaelin Cash, as U-M first rallied then twice lost its lead late. Stephenson came through in the eighth with a lofted fly ball to no-man’s land in shallow center to secure Michigan’s first walk-off of the season. Conway, who scored the winning run, hammered four home runs and totaled 10 RBI in the doubleheader.

• The 16th annual Michigan Softball Academy, held on April 24, raised more than $220,000 for the American Cancer Society. Since 2007, the Michigan softball program has raised more than $2,250,000 for the ACS (seven Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks, 16 academies). No college athletic program has ever raised more money for the American Cancer Society.

Individual Highlights

• Conway was named to the NFCA All-America third team after registering a .379 batting average — a 140-point improvement over her rookie-season average (.236) — and leading the Wolverines with 59 runs, 75 hits, 18 home runs, 52 RBI and a .737 slugging percentage. Conway became the 70th All-American in Michigan program history and U-M’s first All-American since 2021.

• Junior second baseman Indiana Langford also boasted a breakout season, leading Michigan with a career-high .406 batting average, a 77-point jump from her 2023 average (.329) when she earned All-Big Ten second-team honors. Langford batted leadoff over the last 46 games of the season and posted a team-best .487 on-base percentage. She also tallied career highs with 69 hits and 52 runs scored.

• Freshman Lauren Putz was named to D1Softball’s Freshman All-America first team and Big Ten All-Freshman Team after listing among the Wolverines’ top-three leaders in every offensive category with a .392 batting average — the best average for a U-M freshman since Lexie Blair batted .406 in 2019 — along with 51 runs, 69 hits, including 29 for extra bases, and 48 RBI.

• Derkowski was named the Big Ten Tournament Most Outstanding Player for the second straight season after posting a 3-0 record with a 1.11 ERA and 12 strikeouts over 19 innings pitched. She combined with Hoehn for shutout wins against No. 4 Oregon and No. 9 UCLA. Hoehn appeared in three games, posting one win, two saves, a 0.00 ERA and a .167 average against over nine innings, and joined Derkowski on the All-Tournament Team.

• Freshman RHP Kat Meyers threw the ninth perfect game in program history in an 8-0, five-inning win against North Carolina Central on the final day of the Wolverines’ 10-day spring break trip on March 10. Meyers retired 15 straight batters in her first collegiate start, posting six strikeouts, including two apiece in the second, third and fifth innings, and back-to-back swinging strikeouts to close out the game. It was U-M’s first perfect game since Sarah Schaefer in 2018.

• Head coach Bonnie Tholl earned her 100th career win with Michigan’s 8-4 decision in the series finale against Rutgers on April 14. Tholl contributed to 1,366 wins as Carol Hutchins’ top assistant and is now 108-64 after the conclusion of her third season at the helm of the program.

Honors and Awards

Jenissa
Conway

Lauren
Derkowski

Indiana
Langford

Lauren
Putz

Erin
Hoehn

National Fastpitch Coaches Association

All-America (Third Team): Jenissa Conway

All-Great Lakes Region (First Team): Jenissa Conway, Lauren Derkowski, Indiana Langford

All-Great Lakes Region (Second Team): Lauren Putz

Big Ten Conference

All-Big Ten (First Team): Jenissa Conway, Indiana Langford

All-Freshman Team: Lauren Putz

Sportsmanship Award: Ella Stephenson

Tournament MVP: Lauren Derkowski

All-Tournament Team: Jenissa Conway, Lauren Derkowski, Erin Hoehn, Indiana Langford

Big Ten Player of the Week

Player: Jenissa Conway (March 31)

Freshman: Lauren Putz (March 24)

Academic All-Big Ten

Emerson Aiken, Sr., Biology, Health, & Society

Ryleigh Carricaburu, Gr., Master of Management

Ava Costales, So., Biology

Lexi Dellamonica, So., Communication & Media

Lauren Derkowski, Sr., Industrial & Operations Engineering

Maddie Erickson, Jr., Biopsychology, Cognition, & Neuroscience

Avery Fantucci, Jr., Business Administration

Indiana Langford, Jr., Biology, Health, & Society

Ella McVey, Sr., Communication & Media

Madi Ramey, Jr., General Studies

Kaylee America Rodriguez, Sr., Sport Management

Ellie Sieler, Sr., Communication & Media

Ella Stephenson, So., Movement Science

Lilly Vallimont, Jr., Applied Exercise Science

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It’s that time of year when lists and opinions have taken over college football. In other words, as my good buddy Jed Drenning loves to say, there’s not a whole lot of hard news happening right now. 

WVU defensive coordinator Zac Alley was a recent visitor on the “3 Guys Before The Game” podcast and one of the big takeaways from that interview was his belief that West Virginia can be a “sleeping giant.” 

That’s one of the reasons he said he left Oklahoma to coordinate coach Rich Rodriguez‘s Mountaineer defense.

Pro Football Focus has Jacksonville State transfer Cam Vaughn rated as the fourth-highest graded wide receiver in the Big 12 heading into 2025, behind just TCU’s Jordan Dwyer, Kansas’ Bryson Canty and TCU’s Eric McAlister.

That caught some people’s attention.

I noticed a summer ranking of the top 16 Big 12 head coaches from worst to first, and the criteria used was a blending of career history, consistency, winning on the big stage and the ability to develop talent.

I’ll let you Google search that one.

Recruiting news is always popular in June and July as high school players attend camps, visit campuses and begin to narrow down their college choices.

The Mountaineers have landed several commitments during the last week or so. 

Rodriguez spent a week in early May visiting different parts of the state as part of the Mountaineer Athletic Club’s Coaches Caravan, which wrapped up in Wheeling on May 12.

He also was a guest last month on the “Triple Option” podcast hosted by Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II and Rob Stone. 

Most of what Coach Rod told them he has already told us during his spring football media availability sessions.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of that interview, however, came near the end of the podcast when Rodriguez was given an opportunity to ask the podcasters a question. What he asked was probably the best question I’ve heard anyone come up with in a long, long time.

“Other than having really good players, what is the common factor to those teams that have been better than everyone else the last two years (during the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness era)?” he asked them.

Meyer, a three-time national champion coach who won a Big Ten title during his final season at Ohio State in 2018, answered immediately.

“It’s a no-brainer,” he said. “With this NIL, and what I witnessed what (Michigan) and (Ohio State) have done the last two years, you’ve got grown-ass men in that locker room. My best teams were when I had men, not boys, in my locker room.

“You look at the Wolverines (in 2023) and the Buckeyes (in 2024), and they all came back, so it’s not the 17- and 18-year-olds; you’ve got 21-year-old dudes that have been through the wars,” he said. “As I’m watching these teams, I started reflecting back and my best teams were the same way. I had the (Maurkice) Pounceys and the guys who didn’t put up with any $%#^! The locker room was the locker room.”

Meyer added, “I know Penn State is trying to do the same thing this year because a lot of those kids came back where in the old days, they all left because they had to get paid (in the NFL). Now, they are getting paid (in college).”

What an observation!

The current template for success in the Big 12 has been established in Tempe, Arizona. Second-year coach Kenny Dillingham defied expectations last season by taking a team that was predicted to finish last in the conference to the college football playoffs.

The Sun Devils were one play away from upsetting Texas and advancing to the semifinals after rallying from a 16-point deficit.

Dillingham did it with Sacramento State transfer running back Cam Skattebo, Michigan State transfer quarterback Sam Leavitt and other highly competitive portal players who fit the strong culture that he established during his first season there in 2023.

Here in Morgantown, we’ve heard Rich Rod consistently talk about establishing his culture and then finding players who can fit into it.

He did that during his two seasons at Jacksonville State, and, despite having a completely new team last year, led the Gamecocks to a Conference USA championship during their inaugural season at the FBS level.

Now that he’s back at WVU, 24 transfer players were recently announced, including eight from other power four programs. His coaches signed seven high school and junior college prospects last February, one month after revealing a 29-player January portal class, of which 27 are still here after the spring.

Twenty of the 22 players inherited from Neal Brown’s December signing class are still in the fold, which means there are many more new players than returning ones on the roster right now.

When you add those two portal groups together, that’s 51 new players with some sort of college experience coming to play for the Mountaineers this fall.

Yes, West Virginia’s 2025 roster is new, but it’s not necessarily young.

Last year, Rich Rod got a remodeled Gamecocks roster turned around after an 0-3 start to their season.

“After our first year at Jax State, we had seven or eight players that moved up to power four programs,” he noted. “They got bought, and we knew it was coming. We had 60 new players on last year’s team, and so when we started off 0-3, everyone was kind of panicking, and I’m like, ‘We’re going to be okay. Most of our guys didn’t get here until the summer and it’s taking us a little longer to acclimate them.’

“What I learned from that is we better speed that process up,” Rodriguez added. “Once they got comfortable with our system, they kind of took off.”

Those are comforting words. If anything, Arizona State, and TCU a couple of years ago, taught us not to pay too much attention to preseason rankings.

For those of you old enough to remember Rodriguez’s Mountaineer teams in the early 2000s, not to mention the two he coached at Jacksonville State, he has consistently demonstrated an ability to get his teams better during the season.

And on the “The Triple Option” podcast, Meyer reminded us that counting birthdays can be just as important as counting recruiting stars.

Those are some things to ponder while you are browsing the preseason magazines at the beach this summer.

 

During a recent appearance on Bussin’ With The Boys, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia was stirring the pot, taking shots at numerous programs across the college football landscape. Pavia’s critiques weren’t limited to Vanderbilt’s rivals, either.

Pavia also poked fun at the alma maters of podcast co-hosts Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. Specifically, Pavia took aim at Lewan’s alma mater, Michigan, claiming that the Wolverines should win more with the amount of NIL money they have available.

“Michigan’s a great school, but they should be winning more than they are with the cap that they got,” Pavia said. “Like, Dave Portnoy donates to Michigan. I know their NIL is through the roof. Should you not win?”

Lewan didn’t shy away from defending his school. He quickly pointed to other issues that prevented Michigan from having its typical success last season.

“We won seven games last year with throwing turned off,” Lewan said. “If you’re if you’re talking about, ‘Hey, there’s multiple phases to an offense.’ You’re going to take off probably like 50% of an offense and still win seven games and just knock down, drag them out three yards in a cloud of dust.

“Tough year. We win the national championship. You must’ve forgot about that in 2024 and then we go into this past year. Yeah, we had some difficulties at quarterback. Not gonna come at the boys at all. We had a hard time tossing the ball over the yard. It was bad. It was not great. Now we got this cat, Bryce Underwood.”

In fairness to Pavia, he admitted that he expected big things from Underwood. Nonetheless, Michigan fans might not pay as much attention to the 2024 SEC Newcomer of the Year’s compliments, as they do to his glaring critiques.

Of course, it’ll also be difficult for Wolverines diehards to deny that Michigan’s 2024 campaign was underwhelming. Michigan entered the season ranked as the No. 9 team in the country. The team didn’t finish the year in the AP Top 25.

As Lewan mentioned, much of Michigan’s struggles can be attributed to the team’s lack of a passing game. The Wolverines averaged 129.1 passing yards per game, the least of any Power Four team in the country.

If Michigan had had a quarterback like Diego Pavia taking snaps, perhaps head coach Sherrone Moore’s debut campaign at the helm would’ve left fans with much more to celebrate. Alas, Michigan will have plenty of opportunities to silence Pavia in the upcoming season.